The Revenant is inspired by true events. In an expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. In a quest to survive, Glass endures unimaginable grief as well as the betrayal of his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Glass must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption. The Revenant is directed and co-written by renowned filmmaker, Academy Award winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, known for such acclaimed hits as Birdman, Biutiful and Babel.

These six new photos introduce Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass. In the first image, we see him coming face-to-face with a tribeswoman. A frontiersman in the 1800s, Glass will become intimate with a Pawnee Indian woman played by Grace Dove Syme. The Revenant is an adaptation of the 2003 novel by Michael Punke. While the movie promises to stay faithful to the written words that have come before it, production designer Jack Fisk reveals that there is one character added to the film that wasn't in the book. Here, we will be introduced to Hugh's son.

What you are looking at in the second photo is a mountain of buffalo skulls. This unique and eerie landscape was created using a pile of roughly 10,000 bones. It is part of a dream sequence, where Glass witnesses this frontier nightmare. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu was often interested in Glass' inner monologue, and sought interesting ways to portray that on screen. This made for more scenes that are not included in the original novel. Fisk says that Alejandro González Iñárritu wasn't religiously devoted to the book.

The third image shows a group of outdoorsmen hunting down Glass. There is almost no artificial light in the movie, with everything shot natural, on location. The film actually takes place before kerosine lanterns were invented. Most of these nighttime shots were done between 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm, which often left the crew scrambling to utilize the last few seconds of daylight every day.

While Leonardo DiCaprio gets top billing in The Revenant, he will share the screen with his old Inception cast mate Tom Hardy. The movie was shot in excruciating subzero temperatures. The entire crew had to endure these extreme conditions all throughout the extra long production. Most of the film was shot outdoors in Canada, and wrapped in the snowy hilltops of Aregntina. Fisk remembers a time when a nearby lake froze as the cast and crew watched on. The set flooded with ice water as Alejandro González Iñárritu and his cast struggled to finish their scenes. The moment was compared to having to shoot in a hurricane.

A man devoted to his craft, Leonardo DiCaprio went to some personal extremes in making the time period realistic. A strict vegetarian, the actor forced himself to eat real meat in one scene. Glass must survive by consuming a wild bison liver. And Leonardo DiCaprio did that for real. Of course, it left him sick. Fisk believes the actor vomited directly after these scenes were captured on film. You can take a look at some of the extreme conditions in these latest photos from The Revenant. Arriving this December, the outdoor thriller will have quite a lot of competition at the box office as the year comes to an end. But it will surely stand above the crowded marketplace.